Events in 1988

President-elect Roh Tae Woo outlined his 1988 political goals--both
old and new--in a New Year's interview. Some of Roh's comments echoed
the authoritarian language of President Chun's 1987 New Year's speech,
which had typically called for "grand national harmony" in
which transcendent political leadership would see the country through,
if only the people would "rid themselves of all vestiges of the old
habit of confrontation and strife." Roh made ample reference to
traditional themes, speaking of "suprapartisan operation of
national affairs," "rooting out corruption," and a
mixture of persuasion and "stern measures," if necessary, to
bring leftist elements back into the fold. Roh also seemed to promise
genuine innovations: to eliminate authoritarian practices, to
investigate and punish people guilty of past financial scandals, to
protect the press from harassment by law enforcement authorities, to
reorganize intelligence agencies, to demilitarize politics, and to
resolve the 1980 Kwangju incident by restoring honor to the victims and
providing remuneration to the bereaved.

Other leaders and other political forces also had their own agendas
for the new year. Under the heading of "Liquidating the Legacy of
the Fifth Republic," the opposition parties of Kim Dae Jung and Kim
Young Sam sought to investigate corruption in the Fifth Republic, to
reexamine the Kwangju incident, and demanded the release of all
political detainees and the reform of numerous laws that had been used
to control nonviolent political activity and free expression. Like Roh,
Kim Dae Jung's ability to compromise was limited to a degree by his own
desire not to lose influence with an offstage constituency, in this case
the dissident community and other elements to his left. Kim Chong-
p'il's presidential campaign had also made use of these themes in its
attacks on the government party's candidate, Roh Tae Woo. Of even
greater importance, however, was restoration of the reputations and
professional careers of numerous individuals from the Park Chung Hee era
who, like Kim himself, had been purged in 1980 during Chun Doo Hwan's
takeover. These individuals included more than 8,800 civil servants and
officers of state corporations as well as several dozen senior military
officers (from the army chief of staff down), who had lost both ranks
and pensions. Successful resolution of these issues greatly increased
Kim's ability to work with the government party.

Other groups in society had their own expectations. Members of labor
unions at many of South Korea's large corporations, fresh from a major
campaign of strikes in late 1987, hoped for the right to elect their own
leaders and organize outside the framework of the government-sponsored
Federation of Korean Trade Unions. Some dissident organizations hoped that the
forthcoming 1988 Seoul Olympics could be held jointly in P'yongyang and
Seoul. Leftist students also sought opportunities to
meet with North Korean students. Some activist students hoped to
establish firmer contacts with farmers and the growing labor movement,
while at the violence-prone fringe of the radical student movement
others planned to continue to dramatize their grievances through arson
attacks against United States and South Korean government facilities. Still other dissidents
planned to continue demonstrating against the Roh government out of
conviction that it was a simple continuation of the previous militarized
regimes.

After his inauguration in February 1988, Roh took steps to honor some
of his campaign promises, appointing a woman to his cabinet and
approving the rehabilitation of thirty-one generals dismissed in Chun's
coups of 1979 and 1980. Another commitment, to appoint members of the
opposition parties to cabinet posts, was not met when the two major
parties failed to propose names for consideration. Four of the new
cabinet appointees, however, were from the Cholla provinces.

Negotiations among the major political parties promptly began over
amending the National Assembly Election Law, one of the major political
issues left unresolved in the 1987 Constitution. At stake were two
variables: the size of the electoral districts and the degree of
proportionality. Each party took a position that it believed would be to
its advantage. Initially, the government party and Kim Chong-p'il's NDRP
favored different mixtures of large and small districts. Kim Young Sam's
party was divided between its rural members, who also favored multiple-
member districts, and the leadership, which argued for single- member
districts. Kim Dae Jung's party, which in the presidential election had
swept all but two districts in Seoul, hoped to use its heavily
concentrated constituency in the Cholla provinces to become the largest
opposition party with a single-member district system.

The ruling party eventually shifted to a single-member district
formula close to that proposed by the PPD, but finally withdrew from the
negotiations, claiming that the other parties could not come to
agreement in time. In a manner reminiscent of the tactics of the Park
Chung Hee era, the ruling party took advantage of its legislative
majority to unilaterally pass its own draft amendment in a one-minute
session held at 2 a.m. on March 8, 1988. The newly amended law
reinstated single-member electoral districts, last used in the general
election of 1970. It also diluted the element of proportionality
somewhat by reducing the number of at-large seats to 75, or about
one-fourth of the total of 299, and by more evenly distributing them
among the participating parties. The opposition parties strongly
protested (Kim Dae Jung's party less vigorously than the others) and
then started to prepare their campaigns.

According to most observers, the results of the general election of
April 26, 1988, set the stage for a new political drama. For the first
time in South Korean history, the government party lost its working
majority in the legislature. The government party had hoped to emerge
victorious, as the two largest opposition parties again split the
antigovernment vote. With 34 percent of the popular vote, however, the
DJP held only 125 seats (87 district seats and the remainder at-large),
well under the 150 needed for a majority. Kim Chong-p'il's party, the
NDRP, ended up with a total of thirty-five seats, enabling it to form
its own bargaining group in the National Assembly. Kim Young Sam's RDP
gained a small number of seats, but lost in overall ranking in the
larger body. Kim Dae Jung's PPD took the senior opposition party
position with more than 19 percent of the vote and 23 percent of the
total number of seats.

There were several reasons for the upset. The government party might
have made a stronger showing had not Roh, intent upon consolidating his
control of a party that still contained many holdovers from the Chun
period, replaced one-third of incumbent legislators with political
newcomers. Because the new candidates were not able quickly to build up
the personal networks necessary for success at the district level, the
ruling party in effect gave up one of its strongest campaign assets on
the eve of the election. Other factors included the ruling party's lack
of a following among younger and better-educated voters and its failure
to distance itself sufficiently from the Chun government (the former
president's brother was arrested on corruption charges one month before
the election). Increasing regionalism also played a role, especially in
the Cholla provinces, where the government party candidates failed to
win a single district seat.

The impact of the new balance of political forces in the National
Assembly, characterized by the press as yoso yadae (small
ruling power, large opposition power), quickly became evident. Even
before the thirteenth National Assembly convened in late May 1988, the
floor leaders of the government and opposition parties met to agree upon
procedures and to discuss the release of political prisoners. These
four-way talks became common during the next two years, especially for
routine business matters. Four-way talks also were used to negotiate in
advance such political issues as the distribution of committee
chairmanships (nine for opposition parties, seven for the government
party) and the National Assembly's investigation of dozens of cases of
corruption or other irregularities committed under the preceding Fifth
Republic.

The judiciary also moved toward greater political independence in
1988. In June one-third of the nation's judges demanded that the chief
justice of the Supreme Court, Kim Yong- ch'ol, resign as a measure to
restore public trust in the politicized court system. Two weeks after
the chief justice resigned in disgrace, the two major opposition parties
abstained from the National Assembly vote to confirm Roh's first choice
for the vacancy, thereby causing the nomination to fail. This action
resulted in the nomination of Yi Il-kyu, a more independent- minded
figure known for not bending to political pressure. A Supreme Court
justice during the Chun presidency--until his appointment was not
renewed in 1986--Yi had won wide public respect for overturning lower
court rulings in political cases. Yi's appointment as chief justice led
to National Assembly approval of thirteen new Supreme Court justices and
a major reshuffle of the judiciary in July that affected some
thirty-five senior District Court and High Court judges. At a meeting of
chiefs of all court levels in December 1988 when the Supreme Court was
drafting a revision to the Court Organization Law that would give the
judiciary full control over its own budgets, Chief Justice Yi Il-kyu
called on the judiciary to "take a hard look at ourselves for the
situation in which the public felt distrust for the judiciary" and
pledged that he would "never tolerate any outside influence in
court proceedings."

Under Yi's leadership, the South Korean judiciary became more
independent. This trend continued into 1989, as courts overturned the
parliamentary election victories of two government party candidates on
charges of illegal campaigning and sentenced numerous former officials
and relatives of former President Chon Doo Hwan to prison terms on
corruption and power-abuse charges. In another unprecedented action in
late 1989, a judge acting on his own initiative granted bail to a
student activist charged with violating the National Security Act.

The Seoul Olympics, scheduled to begin in September 1988, contributed
to a tacit political truce where the more contentious and difficult
political questions, such as the revisions of "bad laws"
sought by the two larger opposition parties, were concerned. The primary
focus of partisan politics during 1988 was the settling of old accounts
concerning the Fifth Republic. These issues in turn were divided into
two categories: questions related to Chun's seizure of power in late
1979 and early 1980, including the Kwangju incident, and questions
concerning corruption and other irregularities during the period of
Chun's rule through 1987. In July 1988, following the president's veto
of two bills that would have expanded the legislature's inspection
powers--for example, enabling the National Assembly to order judicial
warrants forcing subpoenaed witnesses, such as former President Chun, to
testify--the government party agreed with the three major opposition
parties to hold hearings into numerous irregularities of the Fifth
Republic. Other special committees established in July were charged with
studying reunification policy, democratization issues, problems of
regionalism in politics, the conduct of the Seoul Olympics, and
irregularities in the recent presidential and general elections.

In twenty meetings held between late September and mid- December
1988, the committee investigating corruption under the Chun government
interviewed dozens of witnesses, many of them high-level civilian and
military officers. The televised hearings dazzled the public with
revelations concerning the suppression of media independence in 1980,
the extortion of political funds from large corporations, and
improprieties connected with the Ilhae Institute, a charitable
foundation established by Chun Doo Hwan.

The hearings had several effects. Pressures against the former
president grew as the hearings continued; in late November 1988, Chun
appeared on television to apologize to the nation, taking responsibility
for what he termed the "tragic consequences" in Kwangju in
1980. He also stated that he would surrender US$24 million in cash and
property and announced that he would seek seclusion in a Buddhist
monastery in repentance. The hearings led to subsequent criminal
prosecutions of numerous members of Chun's family, as well as former
high officials, including the former director of the Agency for National
Security Planning, Chang Se-tong. The hearings also gave many South
Koreans their first opportunity to see their legislators in action and
set a precedent for future broadcasts of National Assembly business.

The drama of the hearings drew attention away from the more prosaic
business of the National Assembly, which during the year passed dozens
of laws and decided on a 1989 budget. Despite often strong disagreements
among parties, these results underscored the role of four-way talks in
the process of political compromise, previously a rare commodity in
South Korean politics. The resulting de facto coalition foreshadowed the
merger of three of the four parties in early 1990.

People dissatisfied with Roh's first year as president overlooked
significant political factors, including the restraining impact of world
attention prior to the 1988 Seoul Olympics on Roh's conduct. Roh did
make effective moves to consolidate his political position during the
year, including a series of appointments and reshuffles within the
Democratic Justice Party, the cabinet, and the senior ranks of the
military. Changed political circumstances in 1989 made it possible for
Roh to move more decisively to deal with opponents inside and outside
the National Assembly.